People need to stop hatin' on Valentine's Day.
I know... you're single and you don't want to see other people getting roses and candy and lovey dovey notes while you sit at your desk and wait for them to finally stop making strange ooey ahhey noises and looking at you to see if you agree with how "sweet" their significant other is. Me too. However, despite how my comments on Valentine's Day look thus far, I refuse to be embittered by this saintly holiday where we celebrate Love. I have chosen instead to re-invent this holiday for myself.
Valentine's Day in the land of Abby will no longer be:
-a place where cards are bought at ridiculous prices and immediately thrown away, causing an almost audible groan from the ground at the amount of carbon footprints forming.
-a time when young single people (particularly of the lady variety) look sad all day and think how much better their lives would be if they had a lovah. (This sentiment has a large potential for being decidedly false. Just sayin'.)
-a time when, rather than looking sad, young single people look very mad all day and curse the ground that lovers walk on. This is equally as bothersome and makes me want to point a finger straight at them (point blank) and say "Look you, love might be just around the corner!"
Instead...Valentine' Day in the land of Abby will be:
-a place where everyone sees this day as a spacious field of opportunity to LOVE LOVE LOVE all day long and not sweat any of the small stuff.
-a time when young people celebrate being young and having love to give.
-a time when people of the lady variety look at themselves and see how much about them is wonderful and worth loving, even if there is no hand to hold currently.
-a day when said ladies encourage other ladies to live their lives fully and unabashedly...whether they are in a relationship or not.
I have a dream, ladies and gentlemen, for Valentine's Day!
Seriously though, I know this day can be hard...I'm single and I understand those feelings...but come on. The buck stops here. Start celebrating the love that IS in your life and stop focusing on the love that has yet to come.
And now, if I were Linus, I'd pick up my blue blanket and walk away.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Not as funny as the last post. Not very funny period.
"We cannot enter conflict if we can't first work with confusion."
This quote resonated with me today. I heard it from a teacher of a class I sat in on at Mars Hill Graduate School. We cannot be sure enough to engage fully in conflict if we don't first work out of a place of confusion...struggling to stay in a place of openness, creating space for possibility and connections to find us.
The more I learn about this Counseling Psychology program at MHGS, the more it sounds like art school to me. A large part of my time in art school was spent finding my process. And of course the process is ever-changing so the life of the artist becomes a continual journey of finding the process. What seemed to become most effective for me in creating was what I came to call "collecting." When I am starting a project, I begin collecting. I gather quotes, newspaper clippings, magazine articles, photos, videos, anything that is speaking to me in a focused way. I try my best to maintain space and openness surrounding these gathered objects/ideas/words because I don't want to start judging and labeling too early. I need stay in a place of exploration and discovery until I have enough to begin making connections. My personal struggle is ALWAYS to be able to stay in this place of exploration long enough. I want to start connecting, sorting, and naming before I'm really done collecting. But this will not help me in the end. Why? Because by entering a territory in my mind where I'm sorting, I have closed off exploration. With the above quote in mind, I have entered "conflict" without being in "confusion."
We (everyone...the entire human population...don't think you are left out) are so quick to separate, judge, label, name. This is what makes us human and it can be really wonderful but I think we need to be careful not to close off possibility with this trait. Many times, I really believe that if we can stay honestly open (and this is a hard place to be...we must stay truthful and honest in our openness) then connections find us. This happened to me time and again during the "creative process." If I could hold out long enough and keep collecting, the connections between my objects/quotes/words/photos/videos would almost make the connections themselves. Like a puzzle with magnetic pieces. Suddenly, I can see an image forming.
This teacher today with the briliant quote also spoke about the Garden of Eden. Where did our need to separate come from? Could it be from the very beginning, when we were presented with the tree of Good and Evil? Before this, was it even necessary for humans to be aware of good vs. evil? Now, because of what happened in the garden, we must work out our confusion to even enter our conflict. I hope to be someone who collects before I separate. Someone who works out of confusion (because confusion does not have to be negative) and in my honest exploration, the connections find me.
Still thinking about all of this. Processing out loud. And now going to bed.
This quote resonated with me today. I heard it from a teacher of a class I sat in on at Mars Hill Graduate School. We cannot be sure enough to engage fully in conflict if we don't first work out of a place of confusion...struggling to stay in a place of openness, creating space for possibility and connections to find us.
The more I learn about this Counseling Psychology program at MHGS, the more it sounds like art school to me. A large part of my time in art school was spent finding my process. And of course the process is ever-changing so the life of the artist becomes a continual journey of finding the process. What seemed to become most effective for me in creating was what I came to call "collecting." When I am starting a project, I begin collecting. I gather quotes, newspaper clippings, magazine articles, photos, videos, anything that is speaking to me in a focused way. I try my best to maintain space and openness surrounding these gathered objects/ideas/words because I don't want to start judging and labeling too early. I need stay in a place of exploration and discovery until I have enough to begin making connections. My personal struggle is ALWAYS to be able to stay in this place of exploration long enough. I want to start connecting, sorting, and naming before I'm really done collecting. But this will not help me in the end. Why? Because by entering a territory in my mind where I'm sorting, I have closed off exploration. With the above quote in mind, I have entered "conflict" without being in "confusion."
We (everyone...the entire human population...don't think you are left out) are so quick to separate, judge, label, name. This is what makes us human and it can be really wonderful but I think we need to be careful not to close off possibility with this trait. Many times, I really believe that if we can stay honestly open (and this is a hard place to be...we must stay truthful and honest in our openness) then connections find us. This happened to me time and again during the "creative process." If I could hold out long enough and keep collecting, the connections between my objects/quotes/words/photos/videos would almost make the connections themselves. Like a puzzle with magnetic pieces. Suddenly, I can see an image forming.
This teacher today with the briliant quote also spoke about the Garden of Eden. Where did our need to separate come from? Could it be from the very beginning, when we were presented with the tree of Good and Evil? Before this, was it even necessary for humans to be aware of good vs. evil? Now, because of what happened in the garden, we must work out our confusion to even enter our conflict. I hope to be someone who collects before I separate. Someone who works out of confusion (because confusion does not have to be negative) and in my honest exploration, the connections find me.
Still thinking about all of this. Processing out loud. And now going to bed.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
New Blog and Beneficiaries
This kind of feels like when you get a new journal and you're writing in it for the first time and you feel like it should be something really profound and interesting because the pages are just so blank and new and potential-filled. If you don't write something really interesting and earth-shattering, then you may be setting a trend for the rest of the journal...doomed to be filled with ordinary nothings. After all, you don't want your journal to get a bad impression of you. Could ruin the whole relationship. Your journal will start to expect the mundane and even tune you out when you sit down to write in its pressure-ridden pages. Damn you journal, and your blank stare of pressure. I hate blank canvases for the very same reason. There's nothing left to do but to jump.
...
Yoikes. Scary.
...
So, I just got health benefits for the first time at work. During my HR meeting about this, I was told I would need to choose a beneficiary for my life insurance.
???!!??!!!?????
While initially this was rather freaky, (Understatement), it also gave me this strange sense of power. Of course, if you are married, this question is a no-brainer. Same applies to those with children. And yes, most single people like myself would probably choose their parents or a sibling...but I still have not chosen a beneficiary simply because I like to keep revisiting this romantic dream of leaving the entire wealth of my life insurance to someone really shocking like my dentist, the barista who gives me free drinks sometimes, or even a perfect stranger. I like to imagine them opening a letter stating that I have, in fact, died and they have been chosen as the lucky winner to reap the benefits (literally). Would they be sad? Confused? Joyful? All of the above? More importantly, what would they choose to do with their "reward"? Spending it on something temporal would seem like an insult...but then again they didn't really know me so I can't (and won't be able to) blame them. I would hope that my romantic gesture would shake some kind of soul sleepiness out of them and cause them to demand of themselves a passing along of the romantic gesture torch.
Or maybe they'd say F*** it, I'm spending it on clothes, I never knew her. Who knows. And that, my friends, is part of the beautiful mystery of this plan. One can only hope that humanity itself has enough respect for a free gift to put a little more thought into the decision than the latter sentiment. Maybe I should hire someone to follow whoever the winner is after I die and do a full psychological analysis on the outcome. I would say I'd let you know who I decide upon but then the romantic mystery would be shattered. And who knows, the future winner might be reading this blog.
Well, there you go. The digital journal pages have been forever tainted with this [disturbing] first impression. I doubt I'll be invited to meet the parents.
...
Yoikes. Scary.
...
So, I just got health benefits for the first time at work. During my HR meeting about this, I was told I would need to choose a beneficiary for my life insurance.
???!!??!!!?????
While initially this was rather freaky, (Understatement), it also gave me this strange sense of power. Of course, if you are married, this question is a no-brainer. Same applies to those with children. And yes, most single people like myself would probably choose their parents or a sibling...but I still have not chosen a beneficiary simply because I like to keep revisiting this romantic dream of leaving the entire wealth of my life insurance to someone really shocking like my dentist, the barista who gives me free drinks sometimes, or even a perfect stranger. I like to imagine them opening a letter stating that I have, in fact, died and they have been chosen as the lucky winner to reap the benefits (literally). Would they be sad? Confused? Joyful? All of the above? More importantly, what would they choose to do with their "reward"? Spending it on something temporal would seem like an insult...but then again they didn't really know me so I can't (and won't be able to) blame them. I would hope that my romantic gesture would shake some kind of soul sleepiness out of them and cause them to demand of themselves a passing along of the romantic gesture torch.
Or maybe they'd say F*** it, I'm spending it on clothes, I never knew her. Who knows. And that, my friends, is part of the beautiful mystery of this plan. One can only hope that humanity itself has enough respect for a free gift to put a little more thought into the decision than the latter sentiment. Maybe I should hire someone to follow whoever the winner is after I die and do a full psychological analysis on the outcome. I would say I'd let you know who I decide upon but then the romantic mystery would be shattered. And who knows, the future winner might be reading this blog.
Well, there you go. The digital journal pages have been forever tainted with this [disturbing] first impression. I doubt I'll be invited to meet the parents.
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